Indians love cricket, not sports

Cricket sells for a billion dollars while the next most popular sport would be lucky to find a bidder

It may sound crazy, but the innate Indian trait of overreacting has ensured our standing as a financial superpower – at least as far as world cricket goes. We’re still a largely poor country, with a multitude of “budgetary constraints”, but we can easily find a billion dollars to throw at cricket. The men who invest these massive amounts sense there’s a tidy profit to be made by banking on the country’s rabid passion for the game and its heroes.

But this doesn’t mean that India is a sport-loving country. It only loves cricket. The more I see of this country, the more I understand the vast disparity between sports – and after all, this country is all about disparity. Cricket sells for a billion dollars while the next most popular sport would be lucky to find a bidder. The truth is that Indians don’t really love sport. How many Indians actually play a sport? I am talking here about regular people who work from 9 to 5 for a living. How many play badminton or tennis on a regular basis? I know that the sports facilities at the CCI – and other clubs of its ilk across India – are well used, but its members are a miniscule minority.

Most professionals return home at 9pm. At the end of a long day, my sense is that they’d rather have a nice meal. Ever wonder why restaurants are always full?

When we’re not eating well, we spend our downtime watching heated debates on news channels. That is, if there’s no live IPL game going on. As a verbose, argumentative people, we love our debates more than sports. Parents fantasize that their 12-year-old will one day become a Mahendra Singh Dhoni and, yes, these days, even a Jeev Milkha Singh. But when that 12-year-old has one average year in the sport, his parents quickly pull him off the playground and bury his head in textbooks. After all, he has to get that 94.5 per cent in his boards!

We’re also very quick to ban children from playing in our building compounds; all it takes is one exuberant kid to smash a window pane with a cricket ball. With little playground access, kids end up in front of the television and computer screens. So, then, what right do we have to lament and whine when we don’t win more medals at the Olympics?

We blame all our troubles on Suresh Kalmadi. I get the feeling he’s used to it, and even enjoys the attention.

I realized early on how countries like South Africa and Australia are different. Sport is an important and mandatory school subject. So even if the kid grows up to be a banker, with no serious connection to sport, you can bet that he or she is a pretty good swimmer or football player. For all you know, the banker may cycle to the office every day. You just can’t take sport out of an Aussie or a South African.